I've written about myself and Garbage elsewhere, but basically, the band, through Garbage and "#1 Crush", was the link between my commercial radio-listening days and everything that came thereafter, and so are a pretty important landmark for me (as well as an old favourite). That notwithstanding, by the time Version 2.0 came out, my enthusiasm for them had waned considerably, and this dropping-off continued to the extent that when beautifulgarbage hit the stores in 2001 (was it really that long ago?), I didn't even bother to listen to it. (Too much listening to the Cure will do that to a boy...) A few years on, though, there's a new one on the way, and so I figured that the time might be ripe to finally check their last one out.
I actually thought that I'd probably quite like it, but, it has to be said, I'm finding the album quite underwhelming at present. The production is fantastic, but the songs just aren't quite there, and some of the musical tics (especially the dj scratching) get really annoying. The highlight for me is "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)", which I remember hearing on the radio - it's a fab, glam pop stomp, and the glistening production sheen works in its favour. I also quite like the band's uber-glossy Shangri-Las homage, "Can't Cry These Tears" (albeit mainly because it's an uber-glossy Shangri-Las tribute), and "Androgyny" and "Parade" are also quite good, but there's not much else on here to write home about - somehow, the sound is just too big and the songwriting too uninteresting to hold my attention.
I suspect that I'm inclined to be overly harsh in my judgement of this album precisely because of how significant the band's earlier stuff was for me, and how good that stuff was. Considered apart from any history (personal or general), beautifulgarbage is probably the sort of record that I'd enjoy quite a lot - but I don't have that kind of unmediated access to it, and so I'm left only sort of liking it, and mainly feeling that it really could have been much better.
